At the risk of furnishing Fikile Mbalula with what he seems to crave above all, more publicity, his insult-splattered diatribe on this site on 27 May 2022 (‘Stephen Grootes’s spurious attack disguised as objective criticism is gutter journalism’) deserves sombre, yet concerned, deconstruction.
Concerned because he appears to be increasingly untethered from reality. Mbalula may present himself as a legend in his own Twitterverse, but ominously for South Africa the Honourable Minister appears to imagine that tweets represent the real world. In this self-referential cosmos, words replace action and insults substitute for argument. The more bellicose the verbiage, the more puffed up becomes the braggart.
Mbalula has provided ample evidence of this over the years. After his notorious tweet in March, “Just landed in Ukraine”, the minister refused to comment or explain. But more than two months later, when Stephen Grootes pointed out in Daily Maverick on 26 May 2022 (How low can they all go, Mr President? The case of the still unbreakable Mr Mbalula) that this was actually a lie, the Minister reached for his well-thumbed thesaurus of insults.
His Ukraine tweet, Mbalula huffed, “was clearly satire and a metaphor”. Clearly, it was neither. But there’s a more disturbing suspicion. On the same day, Mbalula retweeted a post from the Russian Embassy about “fighting Nazism in Ukraine”. So perhaps “landed in Ukraine” was a sort of gaming fantasy or “metaphor” about parachuting in to liberate Ukraine — although slaughtering civilians and flattening their cities to free them from themselves is horribly reminiscent of the Inquisition burning people at the stake in order to save their souls.
The charge sheet against Fikile Mbalula, as summed up by Grootes — “lying, bombast and generally weird behaviour unbecoming of a Cabinet minister” — was confirmed within 24 hours by the minister’s blustering reply.
Mbalula, however, has form with scatter-gun invective. He linked the battle against Thabo Mbeki to the war against Nazi Germany and called Trevor Manuel a “drama queen”. Perhaps his prize-winning tirade was against the distinguished academic Barney Pityana: “He is nothing but an embodiment of sponsored views, epitomising overwrought confusion and anarchist tendencies.”
Last January, after he used offensive, sexualised language following a meeting with taxi bosses, the South African Council of Churches wrote to the president asking for a code of conduct for ministers. While in that instance Mbalula apologised, he continues to operate within his own, often inexplicable, code of conduct.
So before the minister reaches for his threadbare thesaurus of insults, let me pose to him two very serious questions regarding his fitness for office, which he has never answered, despite clarification clearly being in the public interest:
- In 2008, you were dispatched by Luthuli House to Cape Town to investigate claims that one ANC faction had rigged votes for an impending provincial conference. It was reported at the time that you were met at the airport by Mcebisi Skwatsha and Tony Yengeni, only to discover that you were being abducted to be circumcised, aged 37. That this was a shock to you was confirmed by Maduna Nqabeni, the ingcibi (traditional surgeon) hired to perform the operation, and in the ensuing struggle to subdue you the ingcibi complained that he had lost his cellphone. Afterwards, it was reported that you were sequestered for the traditional period for a male initiate, and so were unable to report on the alleged vote-rigging. This is a sensitive subject, but as you have never commented it deserves clarification. As reported, this goes to the very heart not only of your fitness for public office but to some of the perverse ways in which your party operates.
- More recent and more serious: the “Grabber” conspiracy. This was to buy votes at the ANC’s 2017 elective conference to prevent Cyril Ramaphosa becoming president of the ANC and then the country. Three days before the conference, a secretive meeting at the Courtyard Hotel in Pretoria, attended by top policemen, resolved to procure a “Grabber,” a powerful eavesdropping device at a cost of R45-million. That was a sham. The excuse: that there was a serious security threat, and although the normal price for a Grabber is closer to R7-million, conveniently all normal budget procedures were to be bypassed. With the clock ticking down to the start of the conference, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) got wind that the R45-million was, in fact, “to be laundered to buy votes at the ANC conference”. Present at that conspiratorial meeting was not only the then National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole, but Bongani Mbindwane, special advisor to you as our then police minister.
Sitole has since been forced out as our top cop, mostly due to his attempts to block investigation into this extraordinary plot. Nevertheless, he now points the finger at you. In his appeal to the Constitutional Court, Sitole stated that you were the first to inform him about the alleged security threat and that you sent Bongani Mbindwane to “advise” him. The only comment you have made is to City Press: “I can’t help you, my chief. Ask McBride. State secrets are state secrets.”
No, Minister. Both the Pretoria high court and the Supreme Court of Appeal have ruled that classification as a state secret cannot be used to cover up corruption or fraud. And, yes, I did ask Robert McBride. Two days after the 2017 conference, as head of Ipid, McBride briefed Cyril Ramaphosa, the narrow winner, about that attempt to block him. It seems Ramaphosa challenged you, as you then rang McBride to complain, “why are you doing this to me?”
The real question, Mr Minister, is why you refuse to explain your role, as the wide coverage of that treacherous plot implies some extremely unsettling implications as to your fitness for office.
Can we now expect a serious answer to a serious question rather than another slew of abuse? In the past, you have awarded yourself assorted epithets, including “Fear Fokol” and “Mr Fixit”. This is your opportunity to seriously up your game to “Mr Accountable.”
Over to you, Minister. DM
[hearken id=”daily-maverick/9588″]
Become an Insider
In most democratic? countries this gentleman would have resigned years ago, be by his own volition or by the will of his fellow parlimentarians. I think that the minister now lives up to his modified epithet of Mr Fix Fokol, (courtesy Politicsweb contribution)
Andrew, resignation by politicians in democratic countries when their continued presence is untenable, is a unfortunately a distant memory. Look at the UK, when a small majority voted for Brexit, Boris was very vocal about “implementing the will of the majority” skip forward a few years and now same Boris supports the DUP holding the NI government hostage “as the minority must be listened to”. In between these 2 events you have party gate, fraud of billions of pounds in PPE purchases and refusal to investigate, a chancellor who held a green card when elected and his wife has “Nomdom status”( a multi millionaire not tax liable in the UK). No resignations, in fact Boris has rewritten the ministerial handbook to thwart the current ethics committee hearing into his behaviour. A behaviour where the only time he lies is when he opens his mouth in parliament. The Dutch cabinet resigns as they became embroiled in a major scandal involving state departments and persecution social grant recipients. Elections followed by nearly a year of consultations sees the same characters back in essentially the same positions. However the negotiations forced everyone to
dilute their election promises so accountability is avoided. They too have PPE scandals. So much for our democratic forefathers. Unfortunately these examples and new found traditions are copied here. I am of the opinion that political parties have outlived their usefulness and a new mechanism to govern countries is needed.
Give this manchild a break – his diapers are soiled.
Someone should write a book about mBlabs, if only to show how the weak-brained have managed to capture the liberation movement and turn it into a selfhelp redistribution centre.
Holding my breath….
Good grief we know this man has lost the plot completely but this article just shows how far. How in the name of all that is normal is this man still a Minister, in a position of power? Who are his advisors? The donkey in Shrek?
Nowhere in my reading do I find any indication of why this man is in cabinet. What does he bring that CR needs? Votes? Guns? What would CR lose if he fires Mbalula? What is Mbalula’s power base? Any idea on this Bryan? I am sure many readers would be interested to know.
It’s clear. He is incompetent!
I wonder – after his experience with Maduna Nqabeni in Cape Town – is he not impotent too?
As a DDG in the DoT between 1989 and 1998, I am deeply concerned with the extent which this self styled “fearless free spirit” has (together with some predecessors) damaged the department. Reminds me of the ancient Greek saying “those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad!” and the Dunning- Kruger syndrome, ‘some people don’t know enough to know what they don’t know”.
On the subject of the national DoT , during my time and for the previous many decades we had two DDGs, now cadre deployment has necessitated increasing this figure to about 9 or so.
Is it any wonder that researchers have found that SA roads are the most dangerous in the whole world, another first for the ANC, when the Minister of Transport clearly has little interest in his portfolio?